The Long Way Down (9 page)

So, of course, Kaufman summoned one up, dressed her in a skimpy outfit, and made her serve beer. The stupid bastard was juggling with nitroglycerin and didn’t even know it. I would have laughed, except that if he gave the word, his pet demon would rip my spine out and use my skull for a bowling ball. On top of that, he probably had a “defend me at all costs” clause in his contract. Getting physical with Kaufman would make my life nasty, painful, and short. Before I took him down, no matter how I did it, I needed to get his demon out of the way.

I turned around and found myself standing face to face with her.

She stood in the closet doorway, watching. She stared at me like an entomologist studying a rare and exotic insect, or a rare and exotic insect studying its next meal. I had one chance to talk my way out of this, one chance to explain my invasion of her master’s shrine. One sentence between life and death.

“So, uh,” I said, “you come here often?”

It was not my shining moment.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Are you going to tell on me?”

“If he asks me a direct question,” she said slowly, as if considering her words, “I am bound to answer truthfully.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She didn’t answer. The hint of amusement crinkled at the corners of her eyes. I got the picture.

“He assumes you’ll just tell him what he needs to know, doesn’t he? Because he thinks he owns you.”

“I am…forbidden to speak ill of my master,” she said, the line sounding like she read it from a cue card. The look on her face told me what she really thought. I knew I was pushing my luck, but it was time to roll the dice.

“Too bad,” I said, “because I think he’s a dumbass of mythical proportions. In fact, I believe generations from now, bards and poets will compose epic verse to commemorate his staggering idiocy. Are you sure you can neither confirm nor deny these allegations?”

She smiled, flashing pearly teeth a little too sharp to be human.

“I am forbidden to speak ill of my master. And you need to go back before he thinks to ask me where you went.”

I could take a hint. I eased sideways past her, almost close enough to touch, and paused. “Will you tell me your use-name?”

A use-name is an alias of sorts in occult circles. True names have the power to conjure and bind, but we have to call each other
something
or else the entire supernatural world would be reduced to “hey, you” and “that guy over there.”

“
Caitlleanabruaudi
,” she said, or something similar to it, but my mind suddenly felt fuzzy and some of the syllables sounded like they could only be pronounced by a mouth with two tongues. There are some sounds, and some languages, that are so alien to our nature that the human brain naturally rebels at them. You’d think we’d take that as a hint.

“Caitlin?” I managed to stammer, the rest slipping away from me.

“Caitlin,” she echoed. A sliver of tongue flicked across her pomegranate lips, as if tasting the name and coming away satisfied. “Yes. You may call me that. Now go.”

I ducked into the bathroom on my way back, flushed the toilet, and washed my hands, making sure to leave them a tiny bit damp. Every con artist knows it’s easy to get away with lies the size of Mount Rushmore, but missing the tiny details will kill you every time.

“—barely have to pay them,” Artie was bragging to Paolo when I walked back into the living room. “You promise them points based on net profit. It’s called Hollywood accounting. Hey, look who’s back! I thought you fell in.”

“Sorry,” I said, patting my stomach and wincing as I sat down on the sofa. “Turns out drinking vodka all night and starting the day with a greasy breakfast burrito is not a winning combination.”

My wallet wasn’t where I had left it, and my host had a new bulge in his hip pocket. Perfect.

“I’ve been there,” he laughed. “So we were talking about your, uh, collection.”

The front door rattled on its hinges, and heavy footsteps slapped against the marble tile. I looked over as our new guest arrived, a hard-eyed piece of bad news in a gray wool blazer. He peeled off the jacket as he walked, giving us a good look at the nickel-plated .38 in his shoulder holster. Clunky cop shoes, cop jacket, cop gun. I tried to make myself very, very small.

“What is this?” he said, looking at the three of us. “A sausage party?”

Artie forced a smile, giving a nervous laugh that didn’t fit his bodybuilder’s frame. “Hey Carl, just entertaining some fans. Sit down, grab a beer with us.”

“Yeah, that’s okay, you guys can go back to suckin’ each others’ dicks. Is she here?” He jerked his thumb toward the back of the house.

“Well yeah, but—”

A thunderstorm brewed behind the cop’s eyes. “But?”

If Artie had squeezed his beer bottle any tighter, it would have shattered in his hand. “Just…maybe don’t mark her up this time, okay? I’ve got some friends coming over tomorrow.”

Carl sauntered over, resting his hand on his shoulder holster.

“We got a problem here, Artie?” he asked quietly.

“No, no, of course not! Hey, go on back, she’ll be happy to see you.”

Carl stomped off. A picture formed in my mind, as shiny as the shield on his belt. Now I realized why something about Artie had put me on edge the moment he opened his front door. Down in the tunnel, Eric had described the men who dumped Stacy’s corpse.

Skinny guy with a face like a hatchet, and a bodybuilder with a blond perm. Hatchet-face was the one who liked waving his gun around
.

It fit Artie and his pal Carl perfectly. Eric had only seen one badge. He just assumed they were both cops. A nasty little suspicion occurred to me.

“Wow,” I laughed, shaking my head. “Your friend’s pretty intense, huh?”

“He’s not my—I mean, he’s, yeah. Intense.” Kaufman sank into the sofa, pouting like a six-year-old.

“What’d you say his name was? Carl? I was watching something on the news last night about a detective, what was his name?” I pretended to concentrate, then snapped my fingers. “Carl White. That’s not Carl White, is it?”

“Nah, his name’s Holt. Listen, guys, I’d better let you go, he’s in a mood and this could get…I just don’t want to deal with it.” He handed me one of his business cards, crisp block lettering on soft cream. “Call me tonight, all right? I really want to talk to you about your collection.”

I promised I would, and Paolo followed me out into the sunlight. As I revved up the Mustang’s engine, he looked at me incredulously.

“That guy totally stole your wallet. It was on the sofa, and I watched him scoop it up.”

“I know.” I leaned back and smiled. “He was supposed to.”

Eleven

I
tugged off the Black Eye, the steering wheel jerking in my other hand. A world of sensations flooded my senses with the force of a brick to the face. I dropped the talisman into my lap and gripped the wheel, taking shallow breaths until I felt human again.

“You,” Paolo said, staring at me from the passenger seat with one elbow cocked out the window, “are one weird dude.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What do you mean he was supposed to steal your wallet? You had me working all night on those IDs!”

“That’s right. He should be online right about now, digging up anything he can about Peter Greyson. Look at it from his perspective: he thinks I’ve got what he wants, a genuine snuff movie, which is also illegal as hell. I might be legit, I might be a crackpot, or I might be a cop trying to snare him in a sting. If he thinks he’s got a handle on who Peter Greyson is, he’ll feel safer, more likely to stick his neck out. Also, now I have a reason to go see him again, once I discover my wallet is missing.”

“So the business cards you had me do up—”

“Are for a real outfit in Los Angeles. EpiCalc was an accounting-software company that went belly-up last year. Kaufman will see the company’s legit, but he won’t have any way to verify whether Peter really was a sales manager there. Then there’s the receipts. If you see an ATM receipt showing a person’s account is fifty-eight bucks overdrawn, and then a liquor store cash receipt from that same afternoon for a twenty-dollar handle of vodka plus he’s splurging on a rented Mustang, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

“The guy’s in a downward spiral,” Paolo said.

“Right. Probably needs cash, too, and fast. Put the story together, and Peter Greyson is a desperate man in a bad situation. He’s the kind of person, in other words, who Kaufman can wave some money at and bend over a barrel.”

I pulled up outside the Love Connection. Before he got out, Paolo gave me a long look.

“Careful. He’s got an ego, but he ain’t dumb. That cop buddy of his looks like real trouble, too. You sure you aren’t in over your head?”

The real trouble
, I thought
, is the woman who could have shredded us both into bloody confetti without breaking a sweat, but Paolo doesn’t need to know that.

“If I’m not in over my head, I’m not trying hard enough. Thanks for the assist, Paolo. I’ve got it from here.”

I took the side streets on my way across town. I wasn’t afraid of being followed; I just needed time to think. I kept the Mustang’s top down. The breeze felt good on my skin, an antidote to the desert heat.

Detective Carl Holt. Same Holt, I’d bet cash money, as the one who gave Jud Pankow the runaround. He and Artie had dumped Stacy’s body and now he was in charge of investigating the case. Nice arrangement. Carl and Artie weren’t friends, that much was obvious. I had Artie pegged as a typical bully, happy to slap around women half his size but easily cowed by a more dominant personality. Carl fit the bill. Hell, he had a key to Artie’s house and walked in like he owned the place.

To see “her,”
I reminded myself,
and unless there was somebody else in the house, that means Caitlin
. I remembered Artie’s protest about “marking her up” and bristled, squeezing the steering wheel.

What kind of demon would Artie summon? Obvious answer, the number one go-to choice for every wannabe sorcerer out there: a succubus. Thing is, according to all the lore I’d read, a succubus’s kiss could be just as potent as mainlining heroin. Just as addictive, too. I ran the numbers in my head and built a theory.

Artie binds Caitlin to his service. Artie murders Stacy. Artie introduces Caitlin to friendly Detective Holt and gets him hooked on her supernatural charms. The offer couldn’t be simpler: “You can romp in the sack with my pet demoness any time you want; just help me cover up this pesky little murder first.”

Both men had something to hold over the other. Carl could expose Artie as a killer, and Artie could take Caitlin away and introduce Carl to the joys of occult drug withdrawal. Mutually assured destruction. No wonder they hated each other.

I could work with that.

• • •

“So what are my options?” I asked Bentley, leaning against the front counter at the Scrivener’s Nook. He looked up at me from behind an antique cash register, arching an incredulous eyebrow.

“Well,” he said, “he can order his demon to tear you to pieces, or he can have his police officer friend shoot you and cover up the murder. Or maybe he can just beat you to death with his bare hands. It sounds like he might be abusing steroids, and that sort
is
prone to uncontrollable rages, I understand.”

I looked around at the clutter of books, stacks upon stacks covering vintage tables and overflowing mahogany shelves. Bentley and Corman’s store existed in a constant state of controlled chaos. They prided themselves on a filing system dictated by whimsy and decor that was trendy two hundred years ago. Every time I came in, I felt like I’d walked into a Charles Dickens novel.

“I was kind of hoping for some more concrete guidance in the research department? Maybe from the backroom collection?”

“Just exorcise her. You know how to do that,” Corman said, easing his way up a ladder on the other side of the store with a box of hardcovers precariously balanced against his hip. I jogged over to hold the box while he finished his climb.

“She’s not possessing a human. She’s an incarnate, I’m sure of it.”

“Incarnate demons are rare for a reason,” Bentley fretted. “The sheer power required to create a physical body out of nothing but raw spiritual energy…most of them just can’t do it. They have to climb inside a human or an animal to survive in our world. You’re absolutely certain?”

“Kid knows how possessions work,” Corman grunted, saving me the effort. “If he says she’s an incarnate, she’s an incarnate.”

Bentley held up a finger. “Point of order? Can we use ‘it’ rather than ‘she’? It’s an important distinction. Daniel, I know that these men are…abusing her, and I understand how you feel about that, but you must remember that you aren’t seeing what you think you’re seeing. That isn’t a woman, or even a person. It’s a creature born of sin and corruption in its purest form.”

“What he’s saying is…” Corman reached down to take another book from the box. “She’d gut you as soon as give you the time of day, no matter how nice she smiles.”

“I get that,” I said, pretending I hadn’t had Caitlin on my mind since the second we met. “If I’m going to take these guys down, though, I need to get around her somehow. Look, Kaufman must have a binding contract somewhere in his house. If I burn the contract, doesn’t that—”